Sri Lanka blocks LTTE commemoration attempt

Sri Lanka has blocked an attempt to commemorate LTTE members killed in the civil war in the Tamil-dominated north ahead of the fifth anniversary of the end of the three-decade long battle.
"An attempt was made by two provincial councillors in Chavakachcheri yesterday to commemorate LTTE members," police spokesman and Superintendent Ajith Rohana said.
The attempt - that defied a public ban on such public commemorations - was blocked by the police, he said.
Tamil sources said M K Shivajilingam and Ananthi Saseetharan, both members of the northern provincial council, had gone to provincial council offices in Chavakachcheri to conduct a memorial for those killed during the last phase of the war.

Saseetharan's husband was an LTTE political commissar in the east. She has claimed he had disappeared after having surrendered to government troops.
The government last week banned all public commemoration in the battle-scarred north.

The Jaffna University, a former hotbed of the LTTE, remains shut till May 20.
Special security arrangements to monitor whether any public commemoration are being organised to mark the fifth anniversary which falls on May 18 is underway, the military spokesman Ruwan Wanigasuriya said.
"But there would be no restrictions on family members to remember the dead within their own house premises.
"If a family member of (late LTTE leader Velupillai) Prabhakaran wants to offer alms in their own home we will not object to that," Wanigasuriya said.

The three decades of the LTTE's military campaign ended on May 18, 2009 with the death of Prabhakaran.
The government's war memorial parade celebrating the fifth anniversary of defeating the LTTE and aimed at paying tribute to troops killed in the final battle will be held in the southern coastal town of Matara tomorrow.